


No Map Or Compass

by youjik33



Category: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-17
Updated: 2014-07-17
Packaged: 2018-02-09 05:53:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1971399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youjik33/pseuds/youjik33
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cheryl gets an unexpected visitor, and things are less awkward than one might presume.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Map Or Compass

**Author's Note:**

> Stole the title from the lyrics to _The Wolves and the Ravens_ by Rogue Valley. Again.

"I made coffee," Walter says, leaning in to kiss her forehead, and although she's still half asleep in that moment Cheryl is sure that she's in love with him.

She mumbles a thank you and a good luck, hears the apartment door open and close, and rolls onto his side of the bed, listening to the rain patter against the window and enjoying his scent on the pillow. Still in that foggy state just on the edge of dozing, she lets herself feel without thinking, warm and loved and in love.

Unfortunately she has to get up sometime, and the rain is making it increasingly hard to ignore the fact that she has to go to the bathroom. Afterward she pours herself a cup of coffee and sits on the living room couch in her pajamas, watching drops slide down the window. Walter's apartment is fairly small even by New York standards, but it's clean and cozy and being there alone is nice. She's got nowhere to be and no real plans; Phil took Rich camping upstate for the week, and they took Chips with them. She lazes around for a while, hoping Walter's job interview is going well, thinking about getting out her laptop. She's been working on her novel, outlining and planning and bouncing ideas off Walter. Before she has a chance to unpack it, though, the door buzzer goes off.

She frowns, standing and carrying her coffee into the kitchen, as if staring at the buzzer will solve the mystery of who's at the other end of it. It buzzes again, and she goes over to hit the "talk" button.

"Hello?"

"Uh." There's a gruff male voice on the other end. "I'm looking for Walter Mitty? This is Sean."

"Sean..." Realization hits suddenly. "Sean _O'Connell_?"

"Yeah. Is this the right apartment?"

"Yes! Just, hang on a sec, I'll buzz you up."

She's already hit the button before it occurs to her that she's just invited a man she's never met into an apartment that isn't hers, and that she's still in her pajamas. Luckily Walter's apartment is on the third floor and she has time to pull on her clothes and run a comb through her hair. She's taken a swig of mouthwash, feeling too rushed to properly brush her teeth, when there's a knock on the door. Cheryl spits, looks at herself in the mirror for a second, and takes a deep breath, reminding herself that there is very little chance Sean O'Connell of all people will care if she doesn't have time to put on any lipstick. "Okay," she says out loud. "No reason to be nervous." 

Sean looks pretty much exactly like she imagined he would, windswept and rugged; he's wearing jeans and a black jacket and has a leather bag slung across one shoulder, raindrops clinging to his tousled hair and scruffy beard. She has an immediate impression that he's somehow both wild and calm at once. 

"Hey?" he says. His forehead wrinkles in confusion and she realizes she's gawking.

"Hi! Hey. Yeah. Um, sorry, I guess I should have been clearer before, but Walter isn't actually here right now. He's got a job interview, but he should be back pretty soon, if you want to wait. Um, I'm Cheryl." She holds out her hand and he shakes it firmly, the corners of his blue eyes crinkling up as he smiles. His hand is rough but she kind of likes it. 

"Cheryl, huh? I've heard about you."

"Really?" She backs into the kitchen to let him inside; Sean swings his bag to the floor and shrugs out of his jacket as she pulls a second cup out of the cupboard. "Coffee?"

"Yeah, that'd be great, thanks." 

He's letting his eyes roam over every detail of the room, like it's the most fascinating place he's ever been. 

"Do you want cream or sugar?" she asks. 

"Black is fine." 

She hands him the cup, and realizes that he's definitely going to see the framed copy of that last Life cover photo she talked Walter into hanging above the dining table. Cheryl doesn't say anything, though, just goes to the table and pulls out a chair, and lets Sean notice it himself while she watches his reaction. He crosses the room as if drawn to it, and from the way his eyes soften and his mouth turns up, she feels confident that her initial suspicions were correct. Sean is absolutely head over heels in love with her boyfriend. 

Cheryl could be jealous. She wonders if jealousy would be the more normal reaction. But instead she feels an incredible warmth toward Sean. She goes to stand next to him and he glances at her as though shaken from a trance. 

"It's really something, isn't it," he murmurs. 

"Yeah," she says, unable to keep from smiling. "I think it embarrasses him a little bit, but he really loves it." 

"He's modest." His smile fades gradually, and he asks, voice soft and barely audible, "Did I get him fired?"

"What?"

"If I had just sent that negative with the rest of them, he wouldn't have been let go, right?"

Cheryl has never thought about it that way before, and she doubts Walter has either. "I don't know. Maybe?"

"I guess there's no point worrying about it," Sean says. "But I do think about it, sometimes."

"I'm sure he doesn't hold it against you." Which is true. Walter probably could have gotten his old job back – or at least its equivalent at Life Online – if he'd gotten Sean to vouch for him, but he seemed resigned to that part of his career being over. The Walter who existed in the hypothetical alternate universe where the negative had never been lost at all might still be employed, but he also never would have hopped on a plane after it, never would have called Cheryl from Iceland or brought Rich a longboard or kissed Sean on a mountain. 

Cheryl wishes she had not thought about that last part because now it's all she can think about. _Oh, no_ , she realizes, looking at Sean in profile, the way his gray-streaked hair falls in waves around his face. _He's really hot._

"Uh," she says, trying to distract herself, "You want to sit down? Maybe we can get to know each other a little bit?"

They settle at the table across from one another. Sean seems completely at ease, leaning back in his chair and sipping his coffee, and she wonders if he's that relaxed everywhere he goes. He probably is, she decides. He's like an incredibly chill version of the guy from the Dos Equis commercials. The problem is she doesn't really know what to say to him, and the silence stretches gradually into awkwardness before she shrugs and says "So what's your favorite color? ...mine's yellow."

Sean doesn't react at all to the absurdity of the question, just thinks about it for a moment. "On a clear night, about an hour after the sun goes down, there's this place in the sky where the last bit of light meets the full darkness, and it makes this blue that's so deep you feel like you could get lost in it. That's my favorite color."

Cheryl stares at him. "Are you even a real person?"

Sean's got a low rumbling kind of laugh. "I don't know why people always say that."

"Do they? I guess you're just a little intense."

"Is that bad?" he asks, quirking an eyebrow.

"No! Well, I don't think so, anyway. You're interesting."

"Everyone's interesting," he says with a shrug. He seems to actually mean it, and Cheryl's affection for him goes up another notch.

"So where are you from, originally?"

"Lima."

"Like, Peru?"

"...Ohio."

Cheryl frowns. "Wait, the _Glee_ town?"

Sean lets out a long-suffering sigh. "Yeah."

"So how did a kid from Ohio end up..." She waves her hand vaguely in his general direction, hoping he gets the idea.

"I got a camera for my tenth birthday, and I started taking pictures, and people liked them." 

She doesn't get a chance to ask him for more details, because they're interrupted by the sound of a key turning in the lock. Cheryl jumps to her feet and goes to meet Walter at the door.

"How'd it go?" she asks.

"Great," he says, pushing a paper bag into her hands and giving her a peck on the cheek. He runs his fingers through his wet hair. "They want a second interview next week. I brought bagels – I got that strawberry cream cheese you like."

"Really? You're the best." She sets the bag on the counter. Walter's knelt to untie his shoes, and hasn't noticed Sean yet, though he gives the leather bag in front of the closet a puzzled look.

"They kept asking me about the Life cover," he says, "and I just don't know what to say about it. It's like I'm a minor celebrity all of a sudden." He straightens and puts his shoes and coat in the closet; he doesn't seem to notice that Sean's jacket is also there. "I mean, I guess I shouldn't complain, even though name-dropping Sean feels really weird." 

"I don't think he'd mind," Cheryl says. "But you can ask him, if you want." She nods toward the table, and Sean raises his coffee cup in salute.

Cheryl grins as she watches realization dawn on Walter's face. He closes his eyes for a second, and he still looks a little disbelieving when he's opened them again.

"Oh my god," he says as Sean stands and crosses the kitchen. "I can't believe-- are you seriously-- is this--" For a wild moment Cheryl thinks they're going to kiss, but instead Walter pulls Sean into a hug. "What are you _doing_ here?" When he steps back he doesn't quite let go, hands still closed on Sean's forearms. 

"I had a 14-hour layover before my flight to Taipei, and I figured I'd stop by rather than sit around JFK all day. I wanted to see how you were doing."

"Good," Walter says. "I'm... I'm really good. You are too. I mean. You look good. Like you're doing... doing good. Yourself."

"I also brought you something," Sean says. "You and Cheryl both." 

Cheryl's been leaning back on the kitchen counter watching them wordlessly, and Walter turns to look at her as though he'd forgotten she was there. She can't exactly blame him for getting so absorbed in Sean; the man has a magnetic presence. 

Walter backs off so that Sean can get his bag. He pulls a thick packet out of it, wrapped in plastic, and he sets it on the table, unwrapping several layers to get to a leather envelope inside. It contains a stack of photographs, and he sets them on the table and steps back so Walter and Cheryl can take a look at them.

"The leopard," Walter says, peering at the top picture. The snow leopard looks directly into the camera, like it's wondering what Sean is doing there, and Cheryl can only imagine what seeing it in person must have felt like. "When did you take this?"

"About an hour after you left," Sean says with a chuckle. "I got lucky, really; some people spend weeks in those mountains without ever getting a glimpse of one at all." There are two more pictures of the leopard, and then something completely different – the view of a night sky, vibrant with thousands of stars, and the dark silhouette of a man with his head tilted back looking up at it. There's no mistaking the shape of his profile.

"Hey, Walter," Cheryl says, nudging him with her shoulder, "I think that's _you_."

"I thought you were taking pictures of the sky," he says, reddening.

"I was," Sean replies. "You didn't even notice that I snuck that one in there, did you." 

" _Sean_ ," Walter says, voice rough. He looks utterly overwhelmed, and Cheryl leans against him, twining her fingers with his. 

"Hey," she murmurs. "It's okay."

"What is?"

"This." She looks at the photo on the table, at the framed magazine cover on the wall, at the way Sean's eyes have gone all soft and gentle watching him. "I don't want to be your Alma, Walter."

"My what?" It's been weeks since the time they watched _Brokeback Mountain_ together, and it takes a second for him to make the connection. "Oh- geez, Cheryl, it's not like that at all." 

"I know," Cheryl says, although Walter _did_ make out with Sean on a mountain, so it's not _exactly_ not like that, either. But she knows Walter really loves her and has never been anything but honest with her, and she doesn't feel right asking him to spell out exactly what his feelings for Sean are when the other man is standing right there in front of them, so instead she says, "But you don't have to hold yourself back for my sake. Really."

He looks at Sean, and then back at her, and Cheryl gives his hand a squeeze, trying to get across that no, really, it's all right. More than all right; at this point she's actually rooting for it. 

"Sean," Walter says again, and Sean says "Yeah?" back, voice barely above a whisper. Cheryl lets go of Walter's hand, fights down the urge to just push him right into Sean's arms. 

She doesn't have to. Walter squares his shoulders, gathering up his nerve, and closes the distance between himself and Sean on his own. Their kiss is slow and lingering and they both have their eyes closed; Sean's hand is on Walter's cheek. When they pull away Walter glances at her and laughs a little, and Cheryl realizes she's been holding her breath.

"I can't be this lucky," Walter says.

"Why not?" Cheryl asks, putting one arm around his waist, and the other around Sean's. Sean is a little taller than Walter, and a little broader, but she rests her head against his shoulder, and the circle they've made feels perfectly natural. 

"What is this? What are we doing?" Walter sounds confused, but not particularly worried.

"Ménage à trois," Cheryl murmurs.

_"What?"_

"It's French for 'household of three'," Sean supplies helpfully.

"I know what it means-- well, actually, no, I guess I didn't know the actual literal translation. But..."

"When's your flight, Sean?" Cheryl asks.

"8:15."

"Well, then, we have plenty of time to talk about it, right? And don't think I've forgotten about that strawberry cream cheese." Cheryl smiles, and goes to stroke the back of Walter's neck, only to find that Sean's hand is already there.


End file.
